Australia

16th March

Surfers Paradise

We checked out and hopped on the bus to Surfers Paradise. Having heard of this agoda app we took a chance and looked up any cheap hotel rooms. Ending up in a pretty sweet looking place at Chateau Beachside – sea view indeed. WOW!!

This place had all the trimmings: Spa, Sauna, Hottub, Pool, Steam room, Tennis Court, Free popcorn and DVDs (having tried three we gave up as they were scratched). Along with our accommodation we also found a three day ticket for Sea World, Wet and Wild and Movie World. Today we hit Sea World. Here we saw Polar Bears for the first time – we weren’t sure about this but, two were orphaned as cubs as their mum got killed or left them. Raised in captivity and later used in their breading program – there is now 4/5 of them.

I had previously done research into whether this was part of the American Sea World and it wasn’t so this is why we went. Even so seeing the Polar Bears and Emperor Penguins (and babies in a crèche being separated from the rest of the flock) wasn’t very nice.

It also had a small pod of rescued Bottlenose Dolphins, which they put on a show. On watching this it was very cool to see (especially the backflips) but, we still didn’t know how to feel about Dolphins being kept and used in shows.

They also had a sting ray pool and we had the chance to feed them. It was very strange, you held a prawn in your fingers and they sucked it out when close. Josh did it too but, found it more freaky than I did, I couldn’t stop laughing over it.

Back home we decided to cook ourselves our first Australian chicken roast – with no oven it was very successful and celebrated by getting drunk.